All The People You Don't Know

I wonder if this is why moving far away can also be so difficult. You are forced to rebuild this collection of familiar faces that takes time, and in that time you are uneasy because there is no one you have any connection to.

This also made me think of people you're sort of familiar with but have never met or seen. Like a coworker your family member keeps mentioning or a friend of a friend you've heard so much about in their stories. It can also be quite surprising when you meet someone for the first time and they tell you "So you're that person John has talked about so much! Can you really eat a whole orange in one bite?"

The ideas surrounding the "intimate stranger" really remind me of the story White Nights by Dostoevsky, where the main character is this incredibly isolated and introspective day-dreamer who sees the regular strangers he finds around the city (and even the city's buildings and cenery, to an extent) as his close friends, like every time they pass by each other they are having an interaction. Once by occasion he meets a woman who starts actually speaking to him, and they almost immediatly form this deep bond of trust and really spill their hearts out to each other talking about their life stories and struggles.
Really nice read to be honest, and quite a short one :)

The more I think about it, I don't think it's sad that so many friendships are one-sided, I think it's beautiful. People freely giving friendship without any concrete knowledge of reciprocity.

In my case, Hannah thinks she's my friend but I barely consider she as a stranger. I feel sorry for her

This is how I discover that my best friend Hannah Fry is almost 6ft tall?!

I don't recall it being hit on specifically in the episode, but one of the more devastating realizations is finding out you are not your best friend's best friend.

Many years ago now I had a full time driving job and used to fill up at the same station nearly every day. I decided to quit and was lucky enough to be able to go to college so I told the guys behind the filling station counter 'You won't be seeing me again' and added, pretty much as a joke, 'you don't have any part time work going?'
"Sure, " they said, "We know you" (he actually said that), 'Start tomorrow'. I stayed on after I graduated and was there for eight years!

I know nobody asked but I'll share a recent and touching familiar stranger farewell. For the last few years I've lived down a little alleyway next to the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. For the entire time a man of similar enough age to me, with a decade of one another, have parked his bike in the shade and rested in the afternoons.

We never had interactions past friendly smiles, waves and sok sabeys (hello in Khmer) but as I was closing the gate behind me for the last time and was getting on my motorbike, he came past on his and very intuitively understood, gestured towards myself, then my home, back to me and then off in the distance, to which I sadly nodded my head. He shook hands, smiled the same smiles we always did and drove off in seperate directions.

Thanks for reading, I just wanted to remember the surreal wonder of our ability to connect on a deep, personal level without actually having to do much more than be there and be kind. Take care!

Does anyone wanna be familiar strangers we can just see each other in the comments and recognize each other but not say anything to each other it’ll be healthy ☺️

I go to the gym twice a week and see loads of familiar strangers. Pretty much every time I go I see the same 10-12 people whom I've never met and never spoken to.

The term Famiiliar Stranger is so poetic. I regularly go to a goth club, where people are unique but shy and the music is too loud to easily introduce onesself,. It's like a dark room full of familiar strangers.

A strange example of familiar strangers I love: when you drive the same route every day at the same time to work, you start to recognize the cars around you without seeing the people.

25 years ago I was studying in Sweden as an exchange student. Student union made a party for all the foreign students one day at the beginning of the school year. Big college = a lot of foreign students from all over the world = a huge party.
I didn't know many people, just a few from my Swedish classes, and I was a shy girl. I was standing alone by a bonfire (the party was outside on an island in Stockholm archipelago) when some boy came and ask why I don't talk to people. I explained that I don't know how to make friends with strangers. He took my hand and walked me through the island. We joined dozens of groups of people, everytime he introduced me and said I want to make some friends. People were all very friendly, told me their names and we joined the conversation for a while. Later he dragged me to another group and so on.
That night I met dozens and dozens of people, maybe hundreds. I didn't remember them individually, of course, it was too many of them. It was such a blur. But EVERYBODY remebered me. I was THE GIRL who was introduced to everybody. People knew my name, I was recognized a lot in the campus, but I didn't recognize the people back. Everybody was friendly, I did

Every familiar stranger is potentially one spoken word away from an unfamiliar friend.

My dad likes to tell us the story of the 1989 SF earthquake that he was on the BART train when it hit and after they evacuated off the train and they were stranded wherever they were, a lot of the people that recognized each other from their daily commutes but didn’t know each other started naturally gathering around each other to work together to find their way back to their homes.

This episode was so cozy

In general, I’ve noticed that extroverts tend to call everyone they’ve met a friend, whereas introverts tend to call most people they know acquaintances.

Both are probably off center, just in different directions.

I am not your friend, but I do love you.

My son who has autism used to love standing in front of our house watching the traffic. He was so many people's familiar stranger. Some would wave everyday and some even dropped off presents at Christmas.